The Venerable Fr. Jean Berthier, M.S. – A Final Procession

Note from the La Salette Publication, “Les Annales”: A La Salette Missionary has emerged into the honors of the Catholic Church; namely, that of Father Jean-Baptiste Berthier (1840-1908). After his intense activity as an awakener of apostles' souls at our first Minor Seminary of Saint Joseph in Corps, and then as Director of the Scholasticate of Theology, he took refuge in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century and, then prompted by a providential inspiration, founded in Holland the first important ministry of Late Vocations. It would soon become a new autonomous religious community, the Missionaries of the Holy Family.

We are happy to publish the pages that Fr. Leon Jambois, M.S. (1893-1959) wrote in 1954 on his return from Holland, after having attended the exhumation and the canonical recognition of the body of the Servant of God, a ceremony that brought to a close the long investigation of the Diocesan Process, preceding the introduction of his cause of beatification in Rome. (Video above shows Fr. Berthier’s final resting-place on the Holy Mountain of La Salette in France.)

A challenging beginning

Fr. Berthier, M.S., teacher, author, founder of the Missionaries of the Holy FamilyIt was in 1895 that Father Jean-Baptiste Berthier, M.S., arrived in Holland, poor and determined like an authentic pioneer. He could not think of building,. since his resources did not allow for any expenditure, no matter how lavish it was. A lack of means and a spirit of great enterprise are usually the signs of God's desires. We are therefore authorized to think that it was like a breath of Pentecost that pushed the entrepreneur of God towards a small city of the North-Brabant-Holland, which bears the name of Grave.

It would not be an insult to call it a village town. If it doesn't show any pretension in its setting of canals and meadows, it is not without history, as its monumental doors and its ancient gothic church attest. It is as clean as any village in Holland. Being from an entirely Catholic Province, a living faith permeates it, without the inconsistencies and the "human respect" to which Christians in secularized countries too often give in.

At the entrance to the little town sits the Virgin, under the title of Duchess of Brabant. She is enthroned under an aedicula (little house), in the middle of a small flower bed that reminds us that we are in Holland, where we love what is clean and nice.

The spiritual surroundings of his new home

About nine miles (fifteen kilometers) from Grave is Nijmegen, where Radboud University is thriving, having taken over from the Charlemagne School after ten centuries. In front of the University building, a mighty St. Thomas Aquinas emerges from a pulpit on which an inscription recalls the Carolingian glory of the University. And, with the serenity of an “Angel of the School,” the great Doctor explains the theological sum to all passers-by.

Elegant Gothic Cathedral in Bois-le-Duc, FranceBois-le-Duc is about thirty-seven miles (sixty kilometers) away. This city has the most beautiful religious monument of Holland, a cathedral of flamboyant style, which is the house of Our Lady of Bois-le-Duc, in front of which comes to meditate an uninterrupted parade of believers of all conditions. A moving spectacle of souls visibly in search of maternal protection. More than one face expresses a distress or perhaps a drama.

If we dwell on these details, it is only to better reveal the spiritual atmosphere that envelops and nourishes the region of Grave and that had its influence on the birth and development of the Congregation of the Holy Family. The saints especially are sensitive to and benefit from a supernatural climate.

We have already said that his apostolic plans brought the venerated Father Berthier to Grave. More fortunate than St. Joseph, he was to find there a shelter for his own Holy Family, which he dreamed of creating for the glory of the Holy Family of Nazareth, whose cult the reigning Pontiff, Leo XIII, was trying to promote, and whose humble and gentle Majesty and holy examples he himself had tried to emphasize in his writings.

The foundation of his new home

Barracks in Grave, NetherlandsOn the outskirts of Grave, a vacant barracks was falling into disrepair, situated at the foot of a man-made hill, the ground of which had been used as a parade ground and which measured about one hectare. Father Berthier acquired the whole, hoping to be able to make sufficient transformations for a Mother House which was to be first of all a house of formation. His faith was counting on heaven, much more than on the prestige of a beautiful establishment. It was an audacity, especially in a country as orderly as Holland, but the saints have irresistible as well as humanly insane audacities.

For a long time they were content with four large rooms, which still have their original floors. One of them served as a chapel, the others were common rooms, either for study or for sleeping. Until the end of his life, the Founder, with a simplicity that it is perhaps not rash to judge as heroic, shared the common life of his children, young and old. He had his worktable in the study room and his cell in the dormitory. It was to this point that he placed his new family under the patronage of the Holy Family.

He brings the gift of his strong faith and a heritage of piety

The House Chapel of the Community is as it was built by the venerated Father Berthier. Its artistic arrangement is not a masterpiece. The masterpiece is the faith, the love, the delicacy that inspired the choice of the smallest details. The result is an atmosphere of piety that gently and imperiously invites us to the fervor that animated the prayers and outpourings of the Founder in this very chapel.

House chapel in Grave, NetherlandsHe did not leave his followers a heritage of art. Many saints have not been talented in art, the image pushing them towards the reality it evokes, but he enriched them with a deep heritage of piety, which we have seen with edification that it was jealously guarded.

At the entrance to the choir, a crowned Virgin, from La Salette, testifies that Father Berthier remained faithful to the devotion to the Virgin Reconciler. This statue was molded on the instructions of the venerated Father. In the intentions of the Founder, if the Holy Family gave its title and its features to the new Congregation, Our Lady of La Salette had the Patronage.

Also, the invocation to Our Lady of La Salette is recited, in a Latin translation, at the beginning of the exercises of piety, and “everyone makes the nineteenth” of each month a special day; that is, the retreat day of the month, as is our custom. We have also noticed other traces of our La Salette traditions. For example, we note the addition of the "Blessed are the tender mercies of the Virgin Mary who bore the Son of the Eternal Father" to the short thanksgiving after every meal.

Eucharist was central

Fr. Frederick P. Pons, M.S.Until the ordination of the first priests, Father Berthier celebrated Holy Mass at the high altar for the community in formation. In his last years, he offered the divine sacrifice at the tiny altar dominated by a painting of the Holy Family. We can easily imagine that it was in these sacred moments and before this small altar that the Founder drew strength and inspiration to model his sons on the holiness of the Blessed Family of Nazareth. The altar, therefore, has the dignity of a relic, just as the room where the Founder breathed his last and which has been transformed into an oratory, is like a reliquary.

We have sufficiently described the life of the venerated Father Berthier by underlining some features that reveal his spiritual physiognomy and situate his activity in his relationship with the Congregation of Our Lady of Malta, which his heart was far from denying. It is time for us to go to the cemetery that he created in an act of faith in the continuity that invisibly links the living and the dead.

In his mind, the cemetery was a part of the residence, so he erected it at the northeast comer of the property. This is the cemetery of the first sowing. Frederic Pons, Missionary of Our Lady of La Salette, who died in 1905, and whose survivors assure us that he was a devoted and prudent collaborator, as befits the acolyte of a Founder. He died on the same day that the first priests of the new Community were ordained. Our attention is also drawn to several tombs whose inscriptions tell us that they contain “the remains of the auxiliaries of the Holy Family.” Among his children and benefactors lay the venerated Founder, awaiting resurrection and canonical exhumation.

He went back to the Father

This, as we have already said, took place on Wednesday, April 22, on the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph. A Solemn Mass before the exposed Blessed Sacrament inaugurated the day. Fr. Dehrenbach, Superior General, who was assisted by the Provincials of Germany and France in the functions of deacon and subdeacon.

Fr. Jean Berthier, lying in stateAround the altar, united in praise and supplication, was a whole phalanx of Fathers and Brothers of the Holy Family. All the Provincials of Europe, accompanied by some religious, had come. Among them there are still some who knew the venerated Founder. Some of them are in their eighties, but their eyes light up with youth when they evoke his memory or exalt his virtue with simplicity, as one of them did in a formula to which we noted. It was from the Reverend Father, who was the first Director of the Apostolic School and who lived with the Founder from 1902 to 1908, that we received this sober and rich testimony: He gave the impression of a saint, nothing but a saint.

The Holy Mass was a warm-up. Around nine o'clock in the morning, the procession was organized to go to the cemetery. The central part of the grave had been cleared the day before, but Church law requires that the coffin of a servant of God be removed from his grave only in the presence of a responsible authority, a promoter of the faith and an ecclesiastical notary, by episcopal delegation. After the representative of the Ordinary of Bois-le-Duc had promulgated an excommunication against anyone who would remove anything from the servant of God, several Brothers of the Holy Family set to work to find the remains of the Father Founder.

A very beautiful detail: the Brothers dug for an hour and a quarter in full regalia. The coffin is much lower in its grave than one would have thought. It is at a depth of one meter eighty that first appeared some debris of the wooden coffin, then finally, the zinc coffin. The emotion is silent but. it is intense.

The open coffin, which we look at for a long time in a deep silence, shows us or lets us guess the bones detached from each other, under the cassock which is quite well preserved, as well as the leather shoes. The skull has been loosened from the jaw, the vertebrae, the tibiae, the femurs, the phalanges of the fingers no longer fit into an organized whole.

Closeup of Fr. BerthierThis is not the time to sing: “O death, where is your victory?” but those present, like the Christians of Grave, who parade in front of the corpse, know well that the soul with its merits is not this skeleton that moves, and that the resurrection of the flesh is in the Christian hope.

In the evening, Father Dehrenbach summarized the impressions of all, saying that if we have to thank the Lord for this new step in the process of beatification, we must not forget the lesson on the last ends, which was given to us by the mortal remains of the Servant of God.

In his new mahogany coffin, the corpse will appear less mournful. The cassock, the alb, the chasuble also contribute to give the impression of a supernatural presence. Is it not this that explains the long procession of Grave's Catholics in front of the reconstructed skeleton? They come forward in a collected manner. They are of all ages. The children are not the least numerous. And we did not observe any sign of surprise on their young faces.

All social categories are represented and there is no lack of workers in overalls. Many hold out a rosary to touch the bones. It is obvious that all are praying and waiting for some help from the “French Missionary” who came to found a Congregation that they continue to call "the French Fathers" even though the house in Grave has only one French Father, Father Granier, Assistant General. He knew the venerated Founder, and we were able, thanks to his fraternal kindness, to present ourselves and visit the house in detail.

A reverence and deep sense of the sacred prevailed

In Holland, especially in the Catholic part, the sense of respect, let us say the sense of the sacred, is still very strong. This is what we thought when we saw the old doctor who had known and cared for the Founder. He too had come, in the majesty of his eighty years, to pay his respects to the one he had venerated. And it was a simple thing for him to come, in the attire of the great solemnities, including the top hat still in use in Holland. He did not speak, but his contemplation told us that he was taking part in a mystery, that of the survival of a friend who had died in the odor of sanctity.

When the religious procession was over, the new coffin was closed. The operation was most meticulous. The inner lid is made of zinc. It must be soldered, and then wax seals must be affixed according to all the canonical prescriptions. And the whole is covered with the mahogany lid.

A Final Procession

Solemn Procession to the grave siteHere is the last act. A final procession takes place. The remains of the Servant of God are taken to a chapel of great purity of line, which the leader and priests of the Holy Family had built on the east side of the property, with access for the faithful. A tomb is dug in front of the apse, where an altar is located. The mahogany coffin is lowered into it after the singing of the joyful antiphon Ego sum resurrectio et vita (I am the resurrection and the life) and the Benedictus. And after the prayer imploring the glorification of the Servant of God has been recited, a stone slab will close the tomb.

It bears an engraved inscription that condenses the veneration and hopes of all those who were seduced by the high spiritual figure of Father Jean-Baptiste Berthier: Good soldier of Christ Jesus – Worker who had nothing to be ashamed of . . . He treats loyally the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:3,15).

The Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette make this enviable tribute their own. They unite their wishes and prayers to those of the Holy Family. And may they all be, following the example of their venerated confrere, Father Jean Berthier, M.S., souls eager for holiness and all striving for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
New grave site (before moving his burial place to France)